Coyote vs. Acme
A cartoon coyote attempts to sue a massive corporation for producing faulty products in a hugely goofy enterprise that is largely a one-note farce.
Looney goons: Lana Condor, Wile E. Coyote and Will Forte
Image courtesy of Altitude Film Distribution.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
If a zany sound effect makes you scream with laughter, then this is for you. It’s an audacious concept, a cartoon character suing the biggest corporation in the world for constant pain and suffering. Mixing live action with a string of cartoons from the back catalogue of Warner Bros’ Looney Tunes, the film is, bizarrely, based on an article published in The New Yorker (in 1990, by Ian Frazier).
The film kicks off in 1992 with an entertaining precursor to the main action, in which an animated scientist, Dr Peter Lorre (modelled on the actor of the same name), decides to blow the whistle on his company’s faulty products. The business is the titular Acme Corporation, a fictional establishment in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote shorts, which manufactures rocket skates, anvils (remember anvils?), explosives and portable holes. Dr Lorre himself is swallowed up by a portable hole, never to be seen again. All this begins with Lorre’s misadventures with a tub of Super Slime which all but consumes him in its sticky, noxious embrace, followed by the pronouncement, ‘Based on a true story,’ which it patently isn’t. This is a nod to the Coen brothers’ Fargo which opened with a similar falsehood – ‘This is a true story…’ – which, actually, was on this side of feasible. The events in Coyote vs. Acme are totally imaginary, as are the scenes in which flesh-and-blood actors intermingle with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rooster Foghorn Leghorn, CEO of Acme.
The interaction of animated characters with human beings on screen is nothing new, of course, as anybody who fondly recalls Gene Kelly’s dance with Jerry Mouse in Anchors Aweigh (1945) can attest to. Since then we’ve had Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, until the device reached its acme (so to speak) with Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The latter, a huge commercial success, introduced us to Jessica Rabbit (voiced by Kathleen Turner), who’s having an affair with the owner of the Acme Corporation (what goes around…).
Here, Wile E. Coyote approaches the dishevelled and disillusioned personal injury lawyer Kevin Avery, whose offices are based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Played with charmless despondency by Will Forte, one can but be prompted to think of fifty other actors who might have been funny in the role. And with Avery’s law firm sliding into ruin, he at least could have sought advice from fellow Albuquerquean legal eagle Saul Goodman (of Better Call Saul fame). As it happens, Avery was at Harvard Law School with Buddy Crane (John Cena), a smarmy, duplicitous hunk who also happens to be based in Albuquerque - and works for Acme.
No one actor seems to have a consistent style, not knowing whether to mug shamefully or to play it straight. Clichéd musical inserts (Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Mozart’s Requiem) and a grubby visual palette add to the overall misery. There are some attempts to appeal to a higher brow, with the aforementioned homage to Peter Lorre (of Fritz Lang’s M fame) and the branding of a nefarious scheme as Project Sisyphus, named after the doomed king of Greek mythology. But what’s really extraordinary about Coyote vs. Acme is that Warner Bros attempted to shelve it in 2023 in order to secure a tax write-off, when Ketchup Entertainment bought the movie off them for a reputed $50 million. Now that it is finally in cinemas after almost three years, it has tickled the funny bone of many serious critics. It’s all terribly baffling.
Cast: Will Forte, Lana Condor, Tone Bell, Luis Guzmán, Martha Kelly, P.J. Byrne, Kenneth Choi, John Cena, with the voices of Eric Bauza, Candi Milo and Jim Cummings.
Dir Dave Green, Pro Chris DeFaria and James Gunn, Screenplay Samy Burch, from a story by James Gunn, Jeremy Slater and Samy Burch, Ph Brandon Trost, Pro Des Steve Arnold, Ed Carsten Kurpanek, Music Steven Price, Costumes Daniela Moore, Sound Joseph Stracey and Jimmy Boyle.
Warner Animation Group/Troll Court Entertainment/Keylight Pictures-Altitude Film Distribution.
102 mins. USA. 2023. UK Rel: 21 August 2026. US Rel: 28 August 2026. Cert. PG.
